Reading like a Writer- Narrative Writing

Anyone who has ever had writer's block can attest to the overwhelming feeling of never finding the

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

words that capture your thoughts and ideas. I'm all too familiar with writer's block, and that is why when my students ask me how they should start their essays, I understand their frustration and worry. When I first learned about Reading like a Reader/Writer, I instantly thought about how much this approach would help my struggling writers. I became excited about the possibilities for differentiating for the full range of abilities in my classroom. And I'm happy to say that my excitement hasn't died down.

I introduced "Reading like a Reader" first (You can read about that here). My students have been getting much better at annotating their thoughts and connections while reading. So I felt the next step was to look at the same text we had been annotating through a new lens- that of the writer. According to Peha, "When we read from the perspective of a writer, we focus less on what the writer is trying to say and more on how the writer is saying it. Specifically, we look at the techniques the writer is using to get his or her message across and how those techniques affect us as we experience the text" (Teaching That Makes Sense). The techniques Peha uses to analyze the text are the six traits of writing: ideas, word choice, organization, voice, sentence fluency, and conventions. The hope is that the students will see how the author uses different devices to entertain (in the case of narratives) his/her audience, and in turn, be able to do similar things in their writing. 

"Most of us find our own voices only after we've sounded like a lot of other people." —Neil Gaiman 

We started slow. Very, very slow. 

Since this is a new notion to me, I started slow and with something very low stakes- a poem! As a class, we read and analyzed "Ode to My Shoes," written by Francisco Alarcón, and discussed the meaning of the poem and use of personification. After ensuring they had a good understanding of the poem, I started asking questions about WHAT the author did. Some of the students began reiterating what the poem meant. Until I redirected them, and asked, "What do you notice about the poem? Not what the words mean, but the way the poem is set up? The classroom was abuzz with what they noticed. "It has short lines", "It has five small paragraphs" (then a student corrected with stanzas), "It has a picture of shoes in the background", "There are no periods", "The author used a lot of verbs", and my personal favorite "He is expressing gratitude to his shoes". I was shocked by the details they were picking up on. Without even knowing it, they were analyzing the author's use of sentence fluency, organization, ideas, word choice, conventions, and voice! This conversation was way more than I expected for our first time reading like a writer. I have to say it gave me the confidence I needed to move forward. 

Next, we tackled personal narratives. Earlier in the school year, we read Sandra Cisneros' short story, "Eleven," and a couple of the narratives from the Wonder Reading Workshop textbook. I divided my class into five groups and had them reread one of the short stories through the lens of the writer. I started the class discussion with the question: how do you know these are narratives? My class answered back with: "They have a hook in the beginning," "It has characters," "There's a dialogue between the characters," "There's a conflict," "The characters learned a lesson." Next, I asked them to choose their favorite short story from the five we had already read like a reader, and complete a note-taking guide using a graphic organizer I drafted. The graphic organizer asks them to note what they notice about each of the six traits of writing. 

After brainstorming and outlining our narratives, I asked my students to look over the hooks of the five narratives we had read as a class one more time. Then I asked them to choose three of their favorites of the five short stories and to use the idea of those hooks to write multiple hooks to start their personal narratives. As in everything with writing, some excel, and those that struggle, but I will say that I had way more students feeling confident with their writing this time around. 

"Eleven" Introduction paragraph 

Student introduction paragraph 

Tips for getting started:

1. Use high-interest texts to engage your students. They're going to have to read it multiple times to understand the passage as a reader and as a writer, so if it's a piece of writing they don't enjoy the task will be draining for all. 
2. Try to use a couple of questions to start getting them to read like a writer. Here are a couple of questions I've been using on repeat over the past couple of months: what do you notice? What about the text jumped out to you? What do you notice about the opening paragraph/closing? What do you like about this author's writing style? Using these questions will get them to analyze the author's writing choices and get them to read like a writer!
3. Don't worry about the students copying the author's ideas. I say this because when I first started using mentor texts, this was a genuine worry of mine. And it's also something I have seen from students who struggle to come up with ideas of their own, but now I look at it as using an author's ideas begets not writing anything at all. Small victories build confident writers. 

Follow along to see how our reading and writing transforms, 

• Jenni Merry